


Temporary Lapse of Judgment

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Accidental Relationship, Alternate Universe, Bickering, Bucky Barnes Feels, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Crack, I Don't Even Know, Riley is also a good bro, Road Trips, Sam Wilson is a gem, Self-Indulgent, Steve Is a Good Bro, Timeline What Timeline, Tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 03:19:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6836950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing Bucky Barnes expected was for Steve’s over-excitable college friend to show up at his door wearing the fucking tackiest sun hat he has ever seen in his life looking at Bucky like he was staring at the Holy Grail. </p><p>All Bucky had wanted was some time alone to watch Netflix with his melting pint of freezer burnt ice cream and maybe enough time to jerk off in the shower while Scott was at his parole meeting or whatever.</p><p>Instead he gets whatever <em>this</em> was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Temporary Lapse of Judgment

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted some cute Bucky/ Sam so I wrote some :) Honestly this is just self-indulgent I just wanted these two to go on a super trop-y road trip lol.

The last thing Bucky Barnes expected was for Steve’s over-excitable college friend to show up at his door wearing the fucking tackiest sun hat he has ever seen in his life looking at Bucky like he was staring at the Holy Grail. All Bucky had wanted was some time alone to watch Netflix with his melting pint of freezer burnt ice cream and maybe enough time to jerk off in the shower while Scott was at his parole meeting or whatever. Bucky didn’t give a damn what it was so long as Scott stopped getting arrested so he could avoid ever having to deal with Scott on house arrest again.

“Who the hell are you?” he asks even though he knew exactly who Sam was.

Sam’s face falls and Bucky almost feels bad for being a dick. Almost. “Sam. Wilson,” he clarifies when Bucky continues pretending not to know who the guy was. “Come on man, we met like a year ago at that party? You told me you’d throw me off a building if Steve replaced you with me? Seriously, you don’t remember threatening to _murder_ me? I… you know what that was a long time ago and I trust that you’ve changed and matured as a person. Steve’s birthday is in a week and-”

“I’m aware of when Steve’s birthday is, Wilson, is there a point to your presence?” he asks, irritated with Steve’s Bucky Barnes Replacement. First off Bucky was just naturally a better best friend, even if it’s been awhile since he’s seen or talked to Steve. It was hardly his fault his stint in the military went downhill fast and landed him with no arm and a dishonorable discharge. Now he was living in a shitty apartment with an irritating roommate that was too stupid to break the law without getting caught. To make matters worse when Scott wasn’t at his stupid meetings he was on house arrest and if Bucky had to deal with one more fucking Twinkie tower he was going to scream.

He didn’t buy Twinkies for Scott to make the leaning tower of Twinkies he bought them so he could eat his sorrow over ending up such a fucking failure. To make matters worse Steve had gotten a scholarship, gone to school, ended up with a sweet marketing job, and got a bunch of better, more successful friends. Every time he talked to Steve he just felt worse in comparison. The most exciting thing to happen to him in the last two years was that time Tony Stark broke into his apartment, crashed on the couch, insulted Scott, stole their coffee, and left never to be heard from again. Bonus points for the sweet prosthetic that showed up a week later with a bow and a card with an inexplicable smiley face written in it.

The prosthetic was fucking amazing though so Bucky wasn’t going to complain about the stolen coffee no one had the money to replace, plus Stark insulted Scott. Bucky would never admit it, and especially not to Scott, but he secretly liked the guy. Who else would play D&D with him at two AM in their skivvies? Scott didn’t require him to put on pants or a smile and he understood Bucky’s grunts, honestly he was all a guy could ask for. That didn’t mean he would tell Scott, under any circumstances, that he didn’t absolutely suck. The most complimentary thing he has said to Scott was that his latest Twinkie tower wasn’t terrible.

Sam sighs deeply while Bucky contemplates the shittiness of his life. “My point is that we should surprise him in L.A for his birthday, we can do a road trip, bond a little,” Sam says, looking largely undeterred by Bucky’s unpleasantness.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m currently living in a shithole of an apartment with a fucking monster sized cockroach on my foot that I am trying very, _very_ hard not to kick at you. I can’t afford to go on a road trip, I can’t even afford to take a shit these days because my water bill is like three months behind and the water got shut off so I can’t flush. A road trip is not in my budget,” he says sarcastically. Even if he did have money he’d have to pay the water bill so he could avoid being chased out of the gas station bathroom with his pants around his ankles by that trigger-happy red neck with a vengeance.

He had told Bucky to get a job and stop bumming off everyone else, people worked hard to provide for themselves don’t you know? Bucky had been tempted to tell him that he _had_ a job in the military, which seemed right up that asshole’s ally considering all the American flags everywhere, but then he saw some shit he shouldn’t have and got the boot. The bastards didn’t even give him any military pension and no one wanted a one-armed guy with PTSD working for them. Thankfully Scott had gotten arrested once again and Bucky snagged his job at the local Baskin Robins. Then the fucking store got robbed and some asshole decided the front door was a drive thru and that was the end of that.

“Hey man, I get it, I’ve got it covered,” Sam says with a wide smile and warm tone. That was so nice actually and honestly all it did was piss Bucky off more because what gave this guy the right? He didn’t need the charity of some do-gooder best friend replacement looking to look even better in Steve’s eyes. He was tempted to slam the door in Wilson’s face but that would only make him feel even worse.

“I’ll pay you back. Eventually,” he mumbles and Sam tells him not to worry about it. But that’s all Bucky was going to do was worry about it for the next however long it took to pay Sam off. Which, at this rate, would probably be the rest of his life because disability barely covered his rent.

*

Sam Wilson had the patience of a patron Saint Bucky swore. He tried everything to piss Sam off, loud music with even worse singing, dead silence, suspicious glares, somewhat creepy comments that alluded to Sam’s imminent death, the whole bit. And the whole time Sam Wilson kept a smile on his face and rolled with the punches, even when Bucky found the most atrocious music he could find, some band that thought shrieking into a microphone constituted as talent, and played it at top volume. At the point _Steve_ would have told him to fuck off. Bucky was about eighty percent sure that Sam was actually one of god’s angels reincarnated in human form because they guy was obviously too good for this world.

Plus, and Bucky would never tell Wilson this, he was so fucking pretty it hurt. As if Bucky needed to add one more way in which Steve’s new friends were better, he was aware he looked like a scraggly homeless man; he didn’t need Sam Wilson’s cheekbones to make it more obvious. His point was proven in totality when a cop Bucky knew for sure was one hundred percent out-and-out racist pulls them over and asks if _Sam’s_ okay.

*

“Look man, I am trying pretty hard to bond with you but you are not making yourself very available. That is like the fifteenth question you have answered with a grunt,” Sam says, sparing Bucky a glance. The brown tinted aviators that were currently on his face somehow made his cheekbones look even better and the brown compliments his brown leather jacket nicely. Bucky had pulled the hood of his sweater up and half over his eyes Oliver Queen style, which had resulted in them being pulled over another two times for cops to ask if Sam was okay.

Bucky grunts at him like a proper asshole. “Alright, so you don’t wanna talk, okay then,” Sam says, undeterred, and calls a friend. It was plenty safe to say that the proceeding two hour conversation Sam had with a ‘Riley’ in which they covered every subject under the sun was not what he expected. Seriously, they went from being disappointed with the decline in bees to talking dildos in less than five minutes. Bucky wasn’t even sure how that transition even happened, just that it was seamless and that alone was impressive.

He suffers in silence as Sam and Riley shriek over the latest Game of Thrones episode and silently wishes for the steering on the car to go so he could be put out of his fucking misery. Eventually Sam hangs up and they were left with blessed silence, right until Sam out on the shittiest pop music Bucky’s ears had ever had the misfortunes of hearing.

*

Day Two wasn’t much better and Day Three didn’t look promising. Sam kept up consistent chatter though Bucky got the feeling that was more for his own benefit than anything. Bucky remained stoic and silent through the whole thing just because he felt like being an asshole still.

*

Day Three is where things get interesting because Bucky breaks and finally starts talking to Sam back. Sam, of course, is freakishly delighted and talks Bucky’s ear off about everything and anything. He didn’t really give a shit about Sam’s three older sisters but they sounded nice.

Sam asks about Bucky and he doesn’t really give the guy much, just that he had no family left and that he much preferred the company of pigeons to Sam. Clint basically counted as a pigeon, he was freakishly birdlike. So was Sam actually but he leaves that alone because telling people they remind you of birds did not go well in his experience. Still, Sam’s inability to sit still, his freakish tendency to be up at the crack of dawn, and his constant chatter were all very birdlike things. Birds got up at dawn, never stayed still, and screamed until they went the fuck to sleep.

*

Day four, the day before they got to their desired local, was where things went from weird to bad. Sort of. As bad at things could get when a patron saint is pissed off instead of a normal human. Sam is talking away about some project he called ‘Project Wings’, which all but confirmed Bucky’s assumption that this guy was part bird or angel or something, when Bucky opens his big mouth.

“A jet pack with wings? That has honestly got to be the most stupid idea I have ever heard,” he says honestly.

Sam gives him a hilarious offended look, “I love my wings!” he says, clearly upset by the comment.

Bucky looks the guy dead in the eye, “your wings are stupid,” he says in a flat tone. That is, of course, when the fucking car decides to break down and Sam threatens to leave Bucky stranded. He doesn’t, because the guy is a patron saint, but he isn’t nice about it either. The guy he calls, some big ass blonde dude with a tiny car and a lot of charisma, picks them up and Bucky jams himself into the back seat.

“Can you move you seat up?” he asks Sam, who doesn’t even turn around to give Bucky the stink eye he knew Sam was giving him.

“No,” he says in the same flat voice Bucky had used when he told Sam his wings were dumb. Bucky shuffles over and suffers with Big Ass Blonde going on and on about his nutty brother and his very science oriented girlfriend. The brother sounded like a right ass but the girlfriend seemed pleasant enough Bucky guessed.

Big Blonde is nice enough to drive them to a hotel while Sam gets someone to service the car so they could sleep before taking off in the morning. Bucky almost groans when he spies the one shitty bed in the center of the room practically begging for a bad porn to be filmed on it but he keeps his mouth shut. Sam showers and he resolves to shower in the morning so he’d actually have hot water, a novelty to him these days considering he now showered in the local gym due to the outstanding water bill.

Sam returns to find Bucky sprawled on the double bed and stands there staring until Bucky was uncomfortable enough to ask why he was staring, “well I’m not sleeping on the ground, move over,” he says.

“I have shared a car with you, and a few motel rooms too, but I draw the line at sharing a bed. You sleep on the floor,” Bucky says, spreading his limbs wider petulantly.

“I will literally lay on top of you if you don’t move over, Barnes, so move your ass,” Sam says, crossing his arms. His shirt was just a bit too small and his muscles looked so much better in that. Bucky scowls at himself because he did not need to be thinking about Sam Wilson’s shirt stretched over some very attractive muscles.

“No, I refuse,” Bucky says, trying his best to stretch his limbs wider with little success.

He doesn’t expect Sam to throw himself on the bed and Bucky with little regard for landing on an entire person. Bucky yelps and wiggles out from underneath Sam, cursing him out along the way and ignoring Sam’s laughter. “I figured you’d do that, now you stay on your side and I’ll stay on mine,” he says with a shit-eating grin on his face. Steve’s best friend replacement sucked.

They lay there for a solid twenty minutes saying nothing before they simultaneously start looking for a way to turn the lights off. After finding nothing to turn the stupid lamps off Bucky gives up and figured fuck it, he’ll sleep with the damn lights on for fuck sakes. Then Sam fixes everything with a clap.

Bucky stares at the ceiling for a solid thirty seconds contemplating his life in a motel with fucking clap on clap off lights before he decides to spite the hell out of Sam and clap, turning the lights on again. Sam claps them off and Bucky claps them back on, starting a war that lasts almost an hour until Sam grabs a pillow and smacks him with it. Offended Bucky grabs his own pillow and smacks Sam back, starts War Number Two.

That ends with them both breathing heavily across the bed from each other while their neighbor bangs on the wall and tells them to stop having such noisy sex. Yeah, whatever, maybe in Bucky’s dreams or something. Wait, no, no sex dreams about Sam. No hate dreams either, just to be safe. They both lay back down and Sam claps the lights off. Bucky claps them back on again.

“I hate you,” Sam mumbles.

*

Bucky was happy to only have a few more hours with Sam before he got to move on to better prospects. He missed Steve and he hadn’t seen him in forever, this would be great. It would be significantly more great if he didn’t have to deal with Sam and all of Steve’s sure-to-be-successful friends that will only remind him how unsuccessful he was.

That is, of course, when they run into a car accident that lands them stuck in a traffic jam. Bucky curses whatever deity stuck him in this god-awful situation and glares out the window. Sam plays along with this for the first hour but he grows bored quickly and fiddling with the music had stopped satisfying his curiosity. “Why do you hate me so much?” Sam finally asks and Bucky full on groans.

“What the hell are you expecting here, Wilson? A traffic jam heart-to-heart?” he asks, “what is this? A bad romance story? A soap opera maybe?”

Sam looks excited about this though Bucky couldn’t imagine why, “you actually spoke!” Sam says happily and oh, of course Sam would find a victory in that. “And yeah, maybe I am expecting a heart-to-heart, road trips in the movies always have heart-to-hearts and I need to fulfill my trope quota for the month. I’ve already got befriending a sad soldier who secretly has a heart of gold down so come on Barnes, what’s eating you?” he asks, grinning.

“Hopefully not fucking bed bugs,” he mumbles, “and for the record my heart is not made of gold, more like… bronze or something, or like chrome.” The look on Sam’s face tells him that that was not a promising start. “Fine, you want to know what’s up? Literally everything in Steve’s life is perfect except me and I don’t want to screw it all up with my disaster of a life. Also everyone he knows is weirdly attractive, who gave you the right to look like you just stepped out of an action movie? And who even looks good in brown tinted aviators? You apparently,” he says, throwing his hands up. As soon as that rant was over he regretted it but it was too late now. He couldn’t even get sitting in a damn traffic jam right, what the fuck?

Sam takes a few moments to process that before he speaks, “you hate me because you’re _jealous_? Oh man I wish I had’ve known that four days ago because I have been like _so_ jealous of you since I met Steve. Like here he is talking about some asshole who hasn’t talked to him in three months and honestly I did not get it, I could never go that long without talking to Riley, it’s been three days and I’m itching for a conversation. Figured you must have been one hell of a friend so I decided to find out for myself only to find that the reason you don’t talk to Steve that much is because of crippling self-esteem issues, not because you’re an ass. Which totally proves you have a heart of gold, by the way,” Sam says because of course he had to win the fucking argument.

Bucky grunts and goes back to ignoring Sam because he shouldn’t be jealous of Bucky; he was obviously the better friend to Steve and that weird Riley guy. “So. You think I look like I stepped out of an action movie?” Sam asks, eyebrows wiggling over his aviators.

“Oh shut up,” Bucky mumbles.

“Oh come on, I think that deserves a little exploration,” Sam says excitedly.

“I hate you,” Bucky says, glaring out the window.

“You do not, don’t lie. I’m growing on you and you know it so accept it and tell me how pretty I am,” Sam says, leaning closer to Bucky, eyebrows still wiggling away.

“Yeah sure, you’re growing on me. Like fungus, or mold, or maybe a tumor,” he says and gets the satisfaction of seeing Sam’s Deeply Offended face.

“First you call my totally awesome wings dumb and then you call me _mold_? I need to call Riley about this because he would be very offended on my behalf,” Sam says, looking very much like he was about to reach over and use the Bluetooth setup to call Riley. Bucky prayed to whatever might be out there that he did not do that and thankfully the deity listened because he didn’t. Instead he irritated the hell out of Bucky for more details on his apparent beauty.

*

Steve thinks they’re great together but he’s confused on when the hell Sam and Bucky got together. “You know I support you no matter what but how… how?” Steve asks, waving a hand around at him and Sam.

Bucky and Sam exchange a look, “how what?” Sam asks finally, wearing an identical look of confusion to Bucky.

“How did you two get together? Does Riley know? Because if you left him out of the loop too we are both going to be really pissed,” Steve says. Riley and Steve have both been pestering their best friends to get out there for the better part of the last year and a half with no avail. Hell at this point if Bucky told Steve he started feeding the cockroaches in his ratty apartment he’d be happy because it was _something_ and that was better than Bucky’s current nothing. Except apparently there was something there because he and Sam came rolling up bickering like they’d been married for twenty years.

And they had been bickering about Sam’s _cheekbones_ of all things. Admittedly they were very nice cheekbones but that was beside the point, when the hell did Bucky care about cheekbones? Or anything else, himself included. “Uh,” Sam says, “we aren’t together. Did you forget about that time he threatened to kill me? Because I did not and apparently he did.”

“It was one time, let it go,” Bucky mumbles at him.

“What the hell do I look like? A Disney princess? I’m not Elsa, I am not letting that go but mostly because you compared me to mold. Can you believe that Steve? He said I grew on him like _mold_ , Riley is going to kick your ass for that,” Sam says and the two start bickering like they’ve been at it for years.

When Riley shows up they get the same interrogation and this time it leads to an argument over Sam’s ability to look attractive in brown tinted aviators which, yeah, that was weird to Steve too. _No one_ looked good in aviators but Sam. “Do you think they know?” Riley asks some time later when the argument has turned into some clapping battle the two had, Steve had no idea, but there were lights and pillows also. And sex, but not really sex. He was lost and clearly so was Riley.

“No, I think the fact that they started dating is totally lost on them,” he says.

Riley grins, “awesome, I’m going to take five thousand pictures of their cuteness and put them all over Instagram. Let me know if any cute kisses happen so I can post that too,” he says, snapping several pictures of Bucky rolling his eyes at Sam’s indignant upset over his wings being dissed.

*

In hindsight Bucky should have realized considering literally everyone, including several strangers, told him that he was dating Sam. Or that they were a cute couple or whatever. Even Scott had congratulated him and Scott was totally romance blind. However he doesn’t realize until he’s in the middle of a bad episode, curled up on his bed rewatching the Star Wars prequels for the third time in a row and Sam shows up.

“Aww, Bucky I know you have some serious problems but the _prequels_?” Sam asks, “up you get, you smell and I _know_ that is not the first time you’ve watched these things. If you start saying Jar Jar Binks is a good character I’ll know to have you committed,” he says, all but prying Bucky off his bed. Eventually he stops struggling but only because he knows that Sam is persistent and he knows that, like Steve, he would not give up easily.

“Jar Jar Binks isn’t even that bad, I don’t know why he gets so much hate,” Bucky says. Sam looks like Bucky just told him Cruella De Vil was in the right and she should have skinned those puppies and he for one thinks that is unfair. Also one hundred and one puppies was way too many puppies, Roger should have given a few up. Maybe only like ten. Oh who the hell is Bucky kidding he’d keep the whole fleet.

“You get your pasty ass in that shower right not and you cleanse yourself of that statement. When you’ve washed away your sins we can talk about the fact that you haven’t spoken to anyone in a week and according to Scott you haven’t left your room in three days. Off you go, I’m changing your sheets and hoping I don’t get a disease,” he says, shooing Bucky off to the shower.

Sometime during his shower he realizes how fucking annoying Jar Jar was so maybe Sam had a point about washing off his sins.

*

Sam does that every time Bucky hits the ground fast, pulls his ass out of the gutter, and if it wasn’t him it was Steve because they were fucking persistent. Apparently after his last three months off the grid Steve was unwilling to leave him on his own and he had started coming around more instead of giving Bucky space like he thought he needed. Riley even starts coming around every once and awhile to talk about the weirdest of shit until one day Bucky sitting in a coffee shop laughing with the knowledge of how he got there.

He knew he needed a kick in the ass but he had no idea a road trip with the Most Annoying Mold on the Planet would trigger that. It was nice though, getting that support system he had been lacking for so long back. Steve had admitted that he felt terrible for leaving Bucky like that but honestly he hadn’t known how bad Bucky was and Bucky wasn’t willing to tell him.

Now he had Steve back and had the added reinforcement of Riley and Sam to kick his ass out of bed when Steve wasn’t there. Usually it was only to the couch where they cuddled and watched Netflix but it was something. Even Scott got his shit together a little and finally got himself off house arrest and into a job. He hated working in the tiny coffee shop but that was only because Bucky and Sam showed up frequently to harass him, occasionally bringing Riley and Steve in on it too.

Eventually they get sick of harassing Scott though so they all disperse, well, Steve and Riley disperse and Sam follows Bucky home like a lost dog, Or Bucky follows Sam home like a lost dog even though it was his home. “Are you alright?” Sam asks when they get to Bucky’s door.

He shrugs, “yeah I’m alright. I mean probably not for long before I fall back into the Deep Pits of Despair but you know, I’m trying. And it’s better now,” he says softly. Finally. It had felt like things were never going to get better but with several people around him pulling him along as needed, even if it was just to the couch, was a huge help.

“You sure?” Sam asks earnestly, gently brushing some of Bucky’s long hair out of his face.

“Yeah, really, I put my hair up yesterday so I didn’t look like Michael Myers,” he says and Sam snorts, shaking his head.

“Well alright then. If you need anyone though you know I’m here, or Steve, or Riley. Just promise him a bad taco and hell be there, seriously, the man has an iron stomach and a weird ability to play therapist. We’re all here for you though is what I’m saying.” He can see how much Sam cares and that was so helpful, really, because his brain constantly told him no one cared but it was hard to deny it when he could see it. Later he was sure he’d make up a million reasons as to why that was all fake and some cruel joke but for now he was okay and he chose to focus on that.

“Thank you. Who knew mold could be so great,” he says, laughing when Sam smacks his arm.

“Says the guy who thought Jar Jar Binks was a good character,” Sam says. 

“That was one time and it was a temporary lapse of judgment!” Bucky says in his own defense 

“You are never living that down, I told Riley, he almost cried for wept for your mortal soul,” he says and Bucky rolls his eyes. God Sam and Riley were soap opera level dramatic but he loved them so he figured he had to put up with it.


End file.
